The previous chapter discussed the possible effect of marijuana use on the progression to what are called the dangerous drugs. The criminalization of marijuana, however, is rarely justified on that basis. Probably the major justification today for the criminalization of marijuana is the argument that marijuana use is a stepping-stone to heroin addiction. As stated in 1968 by Henry L. Giordano, then associate director of the United States Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs:

One particularly grave danger of habitual marijuana use is that there is often a clear pattern of graduation from marijuana to the stronger addictive opiates.1

Sometimes, as in Mr. Giordano's statement, the metaphor of "graduation" is used; sometimes it is said that marijuana use "predisposes one" to the use of opiates; sometimes, that marijuana use "leads to" opiate use. In all these cases, however, we have the notion of causality—that, but for their use of marijuana, a large number of opiate (usually heroin) addicts would have remained free of addiction. The importance of this requirement of causality must be carefully noted. If marijuana use does not cause the heroin addiction, there would be no point in cutting off the supply of marijuana in an attempt to reduce the incidence of heroin addiction.

The Origin of the Stepping-Stone Theory

Probably the most striking fact about the stepping-stone argument for marijuana criminalization is that it is of rela-tively recent origin. The argument had, to be sure, been used by Prohibitionists as a reason for prohibition of alcohol and ciga-rettes. As phrased by the Prohibitionist Century:

The relation of tobacco, especially in the form of cigarettes, and alcohol and opium is a very close one. . . . Morphine is the legitimate consequence of tobacco. Cigarettes, drink, opium is the logical and regular series.2

Marijuana, however, was essentially unknown in the United States at this time. Later, during the 1930s, when the possession and use of marijuana were being made criminal throughout the United States, though the argument was occasionally heard (mainly from temperance groups), it was by no means one of the major rea-sons given for the criminalization of marijuana. The arguments that marijuana leads to aggression, insanity, sex crimes, and idle-ness were given far more attention. Indeed, the most complete study of the stepping-stone theory points out that, "From 1929 to 1948 More than 70 percent of the major articles found by the author dealing with marijuana made no mention of the danger [of its leading to heroin use]."3

More significant, perhaps, was the flat denial of the likeli-hood of progression from marijuana to the opiates by those presumably most familiar with the problem. In one widely quoted excerpt from his testimony before the Congressional committee considering the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, Federal Narcotics Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger flatly denied the stepping-stone theory:

CONGRESSMAN DINGELL: I was just wondering whether the marijuana addict graduates into a heroin . .. user?

ANSLINGER : No, sir; I have not heard of a case of that kind. I think it is an entirely different class. The marijuana addict does not go in that direction.4

Nor was the theory given much circulation until 1949, when what is referred to as a major epidemic of heroin use broke out in the United States. The sharp increase in drug addiction, pri-marily in the northern urban ghettos, was a serious problem—though most observers in the United States have accounted for it by noting that the sources of illegal opiates disrupted by World War II had finally been reestablished. In the popular press, how-ever, beginning with an article by Broadway columnist Earl Wil-son in Collier's magazine, the new epidemic of heroin use was often blamed on the use of marijuana.

And by 1951 Commissioner Anslinger's own view had apparently shifted. In an interview in U.S. News & World Report he stated:

Q. Is marijuana habit forming? Is it as dangerous as other narcotics?
A. It is habit forming but not addiction forming. It is dangerous because it leads to a desire for a greater kick from narcotics that do make addicts.5

It is hard to determine just what caused the commissioner's change of mind. There are no published data between 1937 and 1951 giving any support to the new theory, and the scientific studies now cited by the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs to support the stepping-stone theory originate long after 1951.6 Nor can the cause of his change of mind be simply the resurgence of heroin use in 1949. Apparently Mr. Anslinger had expected this. According to one of his deputies:

In 1947, when there was some talk of closing the Lexington [narcotic] hospital as surplus, Mr. Anslinger advised against it. He told the Public Health Service that an increase in addiction, in his opinion, would occur in a few years.7

In any event, the stepping-stone theory quickly earned acceptance. Within three years, according to one researcher, nine mass-media articles had listed as the only named danger of marijuana its propensity to produce heroin addicts, and five other publications listed this as the main cause for concern.8 Indeed even as late as 1967, the Committee on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence of the American Medical Association listed the progression to heroin use as the "chief danger" of marijuana"

The Association Between Marijuana and Heroin

Despite its shaky beginnings, the stepping-stone-to-heroin theory is now firmly established in the public mind and hence deserves careful examination. To begin with, as in the previous chapter, we look first for the degree of association be-tween the drugs. Here, as was not the case when we dealt with dangerous drugs, we have a sizable body of data from which to draw our conclusions.

Studies of Heroin Addicts

First ,of all, we have the careful work done at the National Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, on the use of marijuana by heroin addicts. An examination of a sample of addicts at the hospital reported by Ball and associates showed that in sixteen of our states, classified as marijuana and opiate states, eighty percent of the addicts had a marijuana history.1° And among Puerto Rican addicts, another study by Ball showed that seventy-eight percent of the population had used marijuana before using heroin.11 At the California Rehabilitation Center, California's institution for the civil commitment of narcotics ad-dicts, an informal survey by the medical director, John C. Kramer, revealed that eighty percent of the heroin addicts had first used marijuana.12 Finally, Dr. P. A. L. Chapple in a study of one hundred British heroin addicts reported that eighty of them had used marijuana before their first experience with heroin."

In short, it is undeniable that, in at least some areas, the great majority of heroin addicts have used marijuana before first using heroin. Before we can show an association between mari-juana and heroin, however, we must be able to show more than that for these particular addicts marijuana use is associated with that of heroin. First of all, we must show that nonusers of mari-juana, otherwise like the addicts, did not so often become heroin addicts. The problem, however, is that, in the limited population from which most heroin-users come, the urban lower-class Ne-groes and Spanish-Americans, marijuana use is so widespread that it is not at all clear that the percentage of addicts who have used marijuana is much greater than the percentage of otherwise similar nonaddicts. And if we compute marijuana use not merely among Negroes and Spanish-Americans but also among the group composed of poor delinquent Negro and Spanish-American youths (Ball finds that a higher percentage of heroin addicts show prior delinquency than show prior marijuana use14) the percentage of nonaddicts using marijuana will more closely approach that of the addicts. Finally, when one takes account of the fact that the bulk of heroin addicts come from specific small neighborhoods within lower-class areas, and of the fact that most heroin addicts have addict friends who initiated them to the use of the drug, the difference in marijuana use between the addict and the simi-larly situated nonaddict may not be nearly so great as has been pictured—though it is likely that there is a difference, if only because through use of marijuana a youth shows himself to be willing to use an illegal drug.

The second problem with using the percentage of heroin addicts who have first used marijuana to show an association between marijuana and heroin use is that at the very most this type of data tells us only about the association in the particular subgroups from which most of our heroin addicts are drawn. It tells us nothing about any association between marijuana and heroin use in the population at large.

Follow-up Studies of Marijuana Offenders
The second type of information we have on the association between marijuana and heroin use consists of several studies following those individuals who had been brought to official at-tention on marijuana charges and determining their subsequent involvement with heroin. The most elaborate of these studies was one done in 1968 by the California Department of Justice in a study designed to measure just this association. The study, called A Follow-up Study of the 1960 Adult Drug Offenders, showed that, of those arrested in 1960 for involvement with marijuana, fifteen percent of the men and five percent of the women were subsequently arrested for heroin involvement.15 It is arguable from this that the percentage of marijuana-users "moving on" to heroin might even be higher than this. The follow-up was done only five years after the initial marijuana arrest and it is conceivable that the steps from marijuana to heroin use and from heroin use to heroin arrest might take longer than five years in a sizable percentage of the population studied. Such a time lag is not very likely, however, since other data indicate that five years is a sufficient time for both steps to have taken place in the great bullc of cases.16

On the other hand, there are several factors that indicate that the fifteen- and five-percent figures would be far too high as an estimate of the percentage of today's marijuana arrestees who will subsequently be arrested for heroin involvement. First and most significantly, the 1960 population of California's marijuana arrestees was very different from the present population. For instance, of the adults arrested in 1960 for marijuana offenses, fifty-four percent were Negroes or Mexican-Americans." In 1968, the number of adults arrested for marijuana offenses had increased sevenfold, and only twenty-three percent were Negroes or Mexican-Americans." Since most of those arrested for heroin offenses in California are members of these two minority groups, this difference between the 1960 and the 1968 population of mari-juana arrestees is highly significant in terms of the likelihood of their further involvement with heroin.

More importantly, we must remember that we are inter-ested in the progression' from marijuana to heroin use among the total population of marijuana-users, not merely among those arrested for marijuana offenses, and that those arrested for mari-juana offenses are most unrepresentative of the marijuana-using population. Today at least, certain types of people--perhaps be-cause of where they live, perhaps because of their ethnic origin, and perhaps simply because they make themselves conspicuous —tend to get arrested far more often than others even for similar drug use. Nor is there any reason to assume that this was very different in 1960, despite the different population of users. It may well be that all any such study based on arrest figures measures is the percentage of this type of marijuana-user that becomes involved with heroin. And since this type of marijuana-user would seem on other grounds to be the best candidate for any stepping-stone effect, it is likely that the California Department of Justice study merely places an upper limit on any marijuana-to-heroin stepping-stone effect.

In addition, although the study does show an association be-tween marijuana and heroin, it also shows several other types of association that tend to undermine the stepping-stone theory. The study shows that a stepping-stone effect applies to progression not only from marijuana to heroin, but also from dangerous drugs to heroin as well. This latter effect—the progression from an arrest for dangerous drugs to one for heroin involvement—comes to nine percent both for men and for women,1° compared to the marijuana-to-heroin figures of fifteen percent for men and five percent for women. Of course, it is likely, in view of the smaller numbers involved, that a greater statistical error can occur in respect to the dangerous-drugs-to-heroin progression. On the other hand, the fact that a case just about as strong (two-thirds as strong for men and almost twice as strong for women) can be made for a stepping-stone-to-heroin effect based not on marijuana but upon dangerous drugs, tends to undermine both stepping-stone theories. If, in fact, there is nothing particularly unique about marijuana as a precursor of heroin, and a similar case can be made for several other drugs, all we may have is the well-known principle, discussed at greater length in the previous chapter, that people who tend to use one drug tend to use others as well. Such a view is supported by another part of the Cali-fornia study. It showed a movement from dangerous drugs to marijuana not very much weaker than that from marijuana to heroin. Thus ten percent of the males and five percent of the females who had been arrested for using dangerous drugs in 1960 were subsequently arrested during the five-year period for marijuana violations.20

We have, in addition to the California Department of Justice study, two other studies on the same issue. One published in October, 1967, by the Institute for the Study of Crime and De-linquency, examined all juveniles whose first arrest on charges of using marijuana and dangerous drugs had occurred in the City of Los Angeles during a two-year period. The purpose of this study was to determine how many of them were subsequently arrested upon charges involving opiate drugs. The results of this study are strikingly similar to those of the California Department of Justice. Of those arrested for marijuana violations, fifteen per-cent were subsequently arrested for opiate violations.21

Finally a New York study showed a rate of progression of approximately fifty percent in a follow-up on juvenile delinquents who had used marijuana. It is likely, however, that this sample was drawn from the most heroin-prone groups to begin with.22

Overall Arrest Rates

The third type of data we have on the possible association between marijuana and heroin are the overall arrest rates. If marijuana and heroin were associated, and especially if use of one caused use of the other, we would expect roughly parallel rises and falls in the usage of, and hence arrests for, both drugs. For a host of reasons, however, most arrest figures are notoriously unreliable. The only state's figures that we could expect to find helpful would be those of California, and indeed these have been used to support the stepping-stone theory. Thus, Dr. Edward Bloomquist writes,

In the whole of 1965, cannabis abuse arrests numbered 4,266. During 1966 the arrests totaled 5,962. During just the first half of 1'967 . . . cannabis abuse arrests in the state of California totaled a staggering 11,587. Now, compare the slow but steady coordinated rise in heroin arrests during the same period in this state: 1,219 in 1965; 1,280 in 1966; and 1,471 during the first six months of 1967.23

In fact, the arrest statistics over a longer period tell a very dif-ferent story.

First, let us consider the total numbers, since one would expect that the more likely marijuana use was to cause heroin use, the larger would be the number of heroin-users compared to those of marijuana. In 1968 there were, among adults, 34,300 marijuana and 4,200 opiate arrests. If one includes juveniles, moreover, the disparity becomes even greater. The figures then become 51,000 marijuana and 4,300 heroin arrests.24 Moreover, these figures do not fully indicate the difference in magnitude be-tween marijuana and heroin usage in California. First of all, a much higher percentage of heroin addicts are arrested than of marijuana-users. Not only are heroin addicts much more likely to be drawn from the Negro and Spanish-American populations, whose members tend to be arrested more often anyway, but since heroin is addicting, it occupies a far more important position than marijuana in the lifestyle of its users, driving them to commit other crimes and to spend a far larger portion of their waking hours seeking the drug.

Moreover, whether or not it is possible to determine who is and who is not under the influence of marijuana—and the opinions of police officers as to the difficulty of this vary enormously—it is conceded by all that it is far easier to recognize someone who is under the influence of heroin. Finally, tl}e arrest statistics tend to understate the ratio between the marijuana- and heroin-users in yet another way. Since the arrest statistics are kept in terms of arrests made, it is much more likely that there will be duplication among the heroin-users than among those arrested for marijuana. This view is supported by the California arrest statistics, which show that in 1968 over two-thirds of the marijuana offenders had no prior drug record while this was true of only one quarter of those arrested for heroin offenses.25

Next we must examine the trend in arrest statistics, in addi-tion to the absolute number of arrests. The graph showing total adult and juvenile arrests tells the story. Or considering adult arrests alone, in percentage terms, from 1960 to 1968, adult marijuana arrests rose some 703.2 percent, while arrests involving opiates fell 7.5 percent.25 In 1960 anests for opiate crimes were 52 percent of the total adult drug arrests; by 1968 the percentage had fallen to 12.2.27

Of course, the overall arrest figures do not completely rule out any stepping-stone effect. It is conceivable that there is some kind of a time lag between the increasing marijuana use and sub-sequent addiction to heroin. One small bit of evidence for this theory is the percentage increase in marijuana and heroin arrests during the short period mentioned by Dr. Bloomquist. This is rendered less likely, however, by several facts. First, in subsequent periods this short trend has not continued. The statistics for 1968 show a rise of 30.3 percent in marijuana/ arrests and one of only two percent (considerably less than lieeping pace with the increase in population) in arrests for heroin offenses.28 Secondly, according to all the studies of the onset of drug use, the median age for beginning heroin use is no more than two years later than that for marijuana. As a result the stepping-stone theory would forecast a rise in heroin arrests less than two years out of phase with the arrests for marijuana crimes. A comparison of the arrest statistics over any two-year period fails to substantiate such a prediction.

Studies in Two Subcultures

Although examination of the overall arrest rates fails to show any significant association between marijuana and heroin, we are not finished examining the available data on the issue. We have specific data from two subcultures that may shed light on the issue.

The Hippie Subculture. Drug use in the hippie culture of the Haight-Ashbury was studied by Shick and associates. Here the population was probably among the very highest drug-using groups in the nation, if not the world." Moreover, since the data was collected before the exodus of the flower children from the Haight-Ashbury was complete, it is likely that Shick's sample contained both the younger, more violent, and psychiatrically dis-turbed freaks, and the older, more passive heads. In both groups marijuana use was virtually universal, and it is likely that if any stepping-stone effect had been present in either of them it would be revealed by the overall data. In fact, however, of the 350 persons in the sample who had "more than experimental use of marijuana" only eight were addicted to heroin.8° Nor can this be accounted for by a time lag between the use of marijuana and the onset of heroin addiction, for the Haight-Ashbury data reveal that the mean time that its population had been using marijuana was four years.31

This is not to say that heroin use is low in the Haight-Ashbury district. Quite the contrary, considering the fact that the population involved was primarily made up of the children of the white middle class, heroin use was quite high. On the other hand, in a population famous for experimental drug use, the fact that twenty-five percent have "tried heroin (though not necessarily intravenously)" is not too surprising, especially since eighty-six percent have tried one of the psychedelics (most frequently LSD), thirty-five percent have tried intravenous amphetamine, and thirty-six percent have had "some personal experience" with cocaine.32 If the stepping-stone effect is a producer of heroin addiction, then the Haight-Ashbury statistics show that at least at the time of the study it was not strongly operative in that community.

The reason why "at the time of the study" is a significant caution with regard to the Haight-Ashbury statistics is that lately, according to several unofficial sources, there has been a perceptible increase in the rate of heroin addiction there. The mechanism for this, however, is fairly clear. The intravenous amphet-amine-user, or "speed freak," often becomes so overstimulated by his drug use that he needs to "bring himself down" with an-other drug. Typically, the barbiturates are used for this purpose, but although such sedatives are of help, many amphetamine-users find that the opiates do the job better. As yet, their numbers have not appeared in the arrest statistics for several reasons. First of all, the phenomenon is a recent one; secondly, the speed freak's drug of choice remains methamphetamine, and hence he uses much less heroin than most other heroin-users; and finally, because he is more middle class than the typical heroin-user, the speed freak is more likely to report for medical treatment as soon as he becomes addicted to heroin, and hence less often is involved with the police.

In any event, though heroin addiction stemming from this source will probably become an increasing public-health problem over the next few years, it is hard to regard the progression from methamphetamine to heroin use as an unmixed disaster. The speed freak who switches from rnethampetamine to heroin may very well not have done himself or society great harm. As between these two very different drugs it is hard to say which is more pernicious. In any event, our concern here, the place of marijuana in this "progression," is very small indeed. It is limited to the issue discussed in the previous chapter, i.e., to what extent marijuana use causes that of methamphetamine.

The Student Subculture. The other carefully studied population consists of college students. It has long been known that although marijuana use was growing more and more common on college campuses, heroin was essentially unknown. It was not until Richard Blum's study of student drug use, however, that more precise data became available.33 Although the marijuana use at the five colleges studied averaged about twenty percent, the opiate use was less than 1.5 percent." Although, as Blum pointed out, "the sample of opiate users [was] so small" that he could not draw many conclusions from it, he did compute the relation of opiate use to that of other drugs:


Of course, mere percentages of heroin-users who take other drugs do not tell us the correlations, let alone imply causality. Not sur-prisingly, the percentage of alcohol-users is high among those who use opiates, but this is because the percentage of alcohol-users in the whole population is high. The fact is that a very small percentage of the alcohol-users--less than two percent—have also used opiates. Similarly, while seventy-eight percent of the opiate-users had used marijuana at the time of Blurriis study, a far lower percentage of the marijuana-users—approximately seven percent—had used opiates.36 And since the threefold rise in marijuana use with no significant rise in that of opiates, the figure is now nearer three percent. Indeed, even using Blum's 1966 data, when the more meaningful relationships described "gy cor-relation coefficients were used, the correlation between opiate and marijuana use was only fair to middling.

Thus opiate use correlated far better with "special substance" (glue, gasoline, nitrous codde) use, slightly better with both seda-tive and tranquilizer use, and precisely as well with amphetamine use, as with the use of marijuana.

Moreover, Blum's figures indicate that if a stepping-stone theory from marijuana is to be adopted, several other drugs fit in better than the opiates. This provided the subject for the previous chapter. Here we need merely reiterate that the correlation between marijuana use and the use of hallucinogens (primarily LSD), the amphetamines, the special substances, and tobacco are all considerably higher than the correlation between marijuana and opiate use.

Nor does one need to stop here in analyzing Blum's figures. Although Blum's data refer only to the use of opiates, the stepping-stone theory, by and large, is stated not in terms of opiate use, but of heroin addiction. We know that heroin is by no means the only opiate used on the college campuses, and indeed, pro-portionally, seems to be used less than it is in the outside society. Furthermore, it is clear that not everyone who has used heroin has become addicted. It is considerably more true on college cam-puses than in the outside society that those who have used heroin have done so rarely and, with the typical middle-class eye on the consequences of one's actions, have avoided addiction. As a result, as rare as opiate use is on the college campuses, heroin addiction is far more rare--even in the face of rapidly growing marijuana use.

Nonstatistical Evidence

Finally, we have a certain amount of nonstatistical evidence on the degree of association between marijuana and heroin use. Thus we know that in New York City, which has the highest number of heroin addicts outside the Orient and almost half the total in the United States, marijuana is freely available and about ninety percent of those addicted to heroin had tried marijuana first. On the other hand, in Vancouver, B.C., which has long had the second-highest heroin-addiction rate outside the Orient, marijuana has until very recently been virtually unknown. And, in Hong Kong, which has the highest heroin-addiction rate in the world, no marijuana use, except among tourists, has been reported. Moreover, in large areas of the world, including the southwestern United States, marijuana products are widely used while there is little or no opiate use.

In short, probably the best summary we can make of the data on the association of marijuana and heroin is that there appears to be no significant association between marijuana and heroin throughout most of our society. That is not to say that one who has smoked marijuana is not more likely to use opiates than one who has not used marijuana. The fact is that the cor-relations among all types of drug use are positive ones, and as a result, the user of any drug is somewhat more likely to use any other drug. The association of marijuana with heroin is less among young people today than the association between either alcon-1 or tobacco and marijuana or than that between other tranquilizers or sedatives and heroin. It is likely that this is true even with respect to those who in fact do become addicted to heroin, predominantly urban lower-class Negroes and Spanish-speaking Americans. On the other hand, among these groups there may well be a stronger association between marijuana and heroin.

Causal Mechanisms

With respect to this group, therefore, we must now examine the issue of causation. Before we begin, however, we should note that most of the causal mechanisms that could be cited to explain the effect of marijuana in producing heroin addic-tion would seem to apply just as well in other subcultures as in the ghetto. Certainly if marijuana merely whetted one's desire for the "kicks" that only heroin could give, one would expect many more addicts from outside the Negro and Spanish-American population. At least first inspection it would not seem very credible that something in our urban ghettos interacted with mari-juana use to cause heroin addiction. We must remember that although a very high percentage of our heroin addicts have used marijuana, even in the ghetto a relatively small percentage of the marijuana-users become heroin addicts.

Here, however, unlike the case in the previous chapter, there have been a good many theories put forth. The most common explanation, as stated by Henry L. Giordano, then deputy direc-tor of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, is that "those who seek personal well-being and exhilaration through the stimuli of drugs ultimately discover that the opiates have more to offer."38 Such a view has a surface plausibility, but it completely fails to explain why the effect is virtually absent in the only marijuana-using populations that have been care-fully studied. Moreover, this explanation neglects the great differences between marijuana and heroin. Heroin's effects are much closer to those of the sedatives and the tranquilizers than to those of marijuana." One would think that if any drugs would sharpen a taste for the opiates it would be these, not mari-juana. As we will note shortly, one implication of Dr. Blum's findings is that, while the opiates offer more than the sedatives, they offer something quite different from marijuana. Moreover, the drugs are very different socially as well as pharmacologically. As was pointed out by Professor Ball, not only are the techniques of administration different, since marijuana is generally smoked and heroin injected, but "the use of heroin usually requires a greater knowledge and a closer association with the drug subculture.40

Furthermore, if Mr. Giordano's theory is that one will keep searching until he hits his right drug, it would be hard to call any of the "discarded drugs a cause of the final drug preference. In that sense, just as alcohol might be discarded for marijuana without being called a cause of the marijuana use, so marijuana might be discarded for the opiates or for any of several other drugs without being a cause of that use.

The-Wootton report handles this argument:

Others suppose that dissatisfaction with the relief or pleasure to be obtained from cannabis leads users on to other drugs, and a minority postulate a predisposition to cannabis which is also a predisposition to heroin. These suggestions arise because most observers obtained their information from drug-users who are patients or offenders. These are often the multiple drug-users who rarely avoid trouble and are frequently to be found in clinics and before the courts. There appears to be a particular group of emo-tionally deprived, disturbed personalities who have tried most of the illegal drugs (including cannabis) before becoming heroin addicts. In fact most heroin addicts are multiple drug-users and have the emotionally impoverished family background not infre-quently found in other delinquent groups, such as high incidence of broken homes, poor school record, police record, unemployment and work-shyness. Cannabis-users with similar personalities and backgrounds may have a predisposition to heroin. . . . It is the personality of the user, rather than the properties of the drug, that is likely to cause progression to other drugs.41

Several quite different theories on how marijuana use might cause heroin addiction have also been put forth by Donald E. Miller, chief counsel of the United States Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Mr. Miller quotes four of the statements reported by Dr. Victor Vogel, chairman of the California Narcotics Evaluation Authority in his paper entitled "Excerpts From State-ments Regarding Marijuana Use Made by One Hundred Con-secutive Heroin Addicts,"

You smoke a stick of marijuana in the morning, get lazy on the job, and get fired. In my case it led to fixing with heroin.

The first time I took a heroin fix was when I ran out of marijuana.

At first I laughed all the time because everything was funny, then it started making me paranoid, leery, and frightened. That's why I stopped and started using heroin.

After a while, it did not agree with me. I stopped because I was not getting any satisfaction and switched to heroin.42

We have previously mentioned the methodological problems in evaluating the statements made by heroin addicts to a person in control of their liberty whom they knew to be a strong partisan of the stepping-stone theory. It would seem that the ingenuity they used in making these four entirely different connections between marijuana and heroin use supports the view that the addicts were trying very hard to please.

The first statement was essentially that marijuana caused the speaker to become so lazy on the job that he was fired. This, in turn, either made him so depressed or else gave him so much idle time that he took to heroin. In this case, apparently, the causal connection with marijuana use was exactly the same as with any other event that might cost one his job. If so, at least in this case, marijuana use would be no more a significant cause of the heroin addiction than a discharge for drunkenness or any other ailment that made one unable to work.

The second type of causation between marijuana and heroin was simply that, when marijuana was unavailable, the prisoner turned to heroin. We have discussed this type of mechanism in the previous chapter in connection with the movement from marijuana to other drugs in periods of marijuana shortage. For the present we need only point out that, despite the recent heroin "epidemic" discussed on page 256, this mechanism does not take place in very many cases. More important even, the policy im-plications of this causal mechanism are very different from those desired by the advocates of the stepping-stone theory. Taking this mechanism seriously would imply that heroin addiction could best be reduced by a commitment to increase rather than to decrease the availability of marijuana—at least assuming, as should be obvious after over thirty years of trying, that we cannot make marijuana substantially less available.

The third reason for moving from marijuana to heroin use is somewhat different, albeit subtly so, from Mr. Giordano's theory. It was not that marijuana in some way whetted the speaker's appetite for a stronger drug, but rather that the drug-prone user dienot like the effect of marijuana and therefore had to use some other drug. If this is the element of causation that underlies the stepping-stone theory, then making marijuana unavailable cer-tainly will not affect heroin addiction any more than removing any number of other substances that the user would eventually find unsatrifying.

Finally, the fourth causal mechanism is quite ambiguous. It may be identical to the third in that "after a while, it did not agree with me" apparently is a statement that the user no longer liked marijuana and hence switched to heroin. Insofar as this rea-soning is not merely a duplicate of the third it may be a statement identical to that of Commissioner Giordano which was discussed earlier. Lastly, it may mean that, rather than whetting one's appetite for heroin, marijuana eventually grows tiresome and heroin use may begin at that time. If this is the meaning, we do have a certain amount of evidence on this point that indicates that this cannot be a common mechanism for movement from marijuana to heroin use. First of all, a sizable percentage of heroin addicts also use marijuana occasionally during their addiction, and an even larger percentage appears to use marijuana after their addiction has ceased. Secondly, one would think that, if this were the mechanism, heroin use would increase with length of marijuana use. In fact, no such effect seems visible. A great many heroin-users begin their serious habit very shortly after first using marijuana, the median time between the addict's first use of mari-juana and of heroin being about two years." It would seem, then, that there is not really time for marijuana to pall on most users of heroin. And finally, if marijuana began to pall on its users, causing them to look elsewhere for drug satisfaction, one would expect that they would first increase their consumption of mari-juana. The observation, in Chapter III, that marijuana-users do not, in fact, increase their dosage, then, points against this possibility.

One could, of course, postulate several other possible causal mechanisms: that marijuana euphoria weakens the judgment of its users so much that they are willing to try heroin; 'that the analgesic action of marijuana makes an initial heroin injection less painful physically and/or psychologically; or that through a not yet understood biochemical mechanism marijuana sets up a craving in the body that, in "susceptible" individuals, can only be satisfied by the use of heroin. One can speculate at somelength on possible causal mechanisms. The significant point about those just mentioned is that, aside from the fact that they have not yet been put forth by the advocates of the stepping-stone theory, there is no reason to believe any of them any more or'less than the causal mechanisms discussed above that have been put forward by the United States Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

The basic problem with all of the causal mechanisms is sev-eralfold. First, they all fail in any realistic way to account for the fact that whatever causal mechanism is said to exist is effec-tive primarily in the lower-class ethnic-minority areas and not over the far larger segments of society that also use marijuana. Second, all fail to offer any explanation as to why it should be heroin rather than some other drug to which marijuana should be a step-ping-stone. Finally, all fail to come up with any rational reason why marijuana should be different from all other drugs in causing heroin addiction.

Apparently, most adherents to the stepping-stone theory have felt that they have accounted for this last problem—the difference between marijuana and other drugs—with their assumption that marijuana alone, among drugs, is used solely for "kicks." Thus the Chief Counsel for the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs states that "marijuana users . . . have one motive when they use the substance—to achieve a physical and mental thrill, to smoke more and more until there is an altering of the mental process."'" The fact is, however, as discussed in Chapter III, that virtually every recent study done of drug use in the United States shows that, unlike the users of certain other drugs such as the amphetamines, marijuana-users for the most part use the drug to feel pleasant and relaxed—just as do the users of alcohol. Moreover, even if one assumes that marijuana-users do use their drug to obtain an altered consciousness, this is also true of certain users of many other drugs, none of which has been alleged to be a stepping-stone to heroin.

Alternatives to a Causal Connection

Not only is there reason to be dubious about all of the "causal mechanisms put forth to explain a stepping-stone effect, there are some rather persuasive reasons to believe that in fact there exists no causal stepping-stone mechanism at all. While the proof of a negative is always difficult, there are, it would seem, certain items of evidence that tend to refute a causal connection between marijuana and heroin use.

First of all, we should, as in the previous chapter, examine the possibility that rather than marijuana use causing that of heroin, something else causes both. Certainly this theory is at least as plausible as any advanced to explain the association between marijuana and heroin. If one's need for a drug is determined by inner psychological makeup it may well be that, because of vari-ous emotional deprivations, some slum-dwelling members of ethnic minorities have a need for the numbing effect of heroin. They will, of course, try other drugs first for all sorts of reasons, including the aspects of mildness and availability discussed in the previous chapter and the fact that using heroin is almost every-where regarded as a significant step. As a result, one should hardly be surprised that these heroin addicts have used marijuana first.

One would be more surprised if, considering marijuana's easy availability and relatively mild effects, they had not first tried it.

Indeed almost all heroin addicts have histories of extremely heavy drug use, and this is true not only of the majority, who are slum-dwellers, but also the minority, who are middle-class drug-users but nonetheless have somehow become addicted. Not only marijuana but excessive consumption of alcohol, cough medi-cine, glue, and the like play a part in their histories.

Presumably it is our strong cultural constraint against using heroin and a well-justified fear of the drug that accounts for a drug-user's having tried everything else he can think of before trying heroin. It is perhaps significant that in the Stanford Law Review sample of those arrested for marijuana possession the one person who also possessed heroin was:

. . . a walking pharmacopoeia. The arresting agents found in his possession—besides the heroin and [some] opium—one-half gram of marijuana, a hypodermic needle, 59 amphetamine pills, 13 barbiturate pills, two codeine pills, 47 grams of hashish, and a quantity of the hallucinogen known as DMT.45

Though alternative explanations for the association between marijuana and heroin make causal explanations less likely, they by no means establish a lack of causation. There is, however, some evidence that points in this direction. Perhaps the most persuasive evidence on this issue is the literature on the causes of heroin addiction. As one author has pointed out," of the nine psychiatric studies of heroin addicts published between 1950 and 1965, only one even mentions marijuana (and that only in pass-ing). Not one of these psychiatric studies, in listing the reasons why a certain percentage of youths become heroin addicts, at-tributes any causality whatsoever to marijuana use. And when one considers the much larger volume of nonpsychiatric, sociolog-ical literature on heroin addiction, the lack of any work attributing causality to marijuana use becomes even more striking. Here marijuana use is often mentioned—but again, in every case, with-out any attribution of causality. This is not to say that there is no mention of the stepping-stone theory in the scientific litera-ture. What is fascinating, however, is that the issue is discussed only in connection with the dangers of marijuana use and never in serious discussions of the causes of heroin addiction.

The Blumer Report

Probably the most careful attempt to describe the mechanism by which heroin addicts are created is contained in the Blumer report:" According to this study, the cool culture among the Negro and Mexican-American youths of West Oakland, which includes the entire population except for the "rowdies" and the "lames," is divided into three basic life-styles: the pot head, the mellow dude, and the player." All three of the styles involve marijuana, though in very different ways. The mellow dudes, by far the largest of the groups, use marijuana because it relaxes them around women and because they feel it heightens their en-joyment of music; pot heads not only use marijuana but also sell the drug in small quantities, though they seem not to be in-volved in any other illegality"; and finally, the players regard their involvement in marijuana primarily as a means to the end of making money out of it and any other "hustle" they can work.50 According to the Blumer report:

Popular conceptions of youthful drug use almost always presume that youthful users move along a line of development ending in heroin addiction. Our evidence offers no support to these concep-tions but, instead, largely contradicts them. Before tracing the line dexperience which may lead some youngsters to heroin addiction, it is in order to remember, as our earlier discussion has indicated, that most youthful drug users look with disdain and frequently with fear upon the use of heroin. Most "mellow" users—the largest group among adolescents—and most "pot heads" view heroin ad-dicts, as having "lost their cool" and as being weak-minded; they apply to them such derogatory labels as "punks," "burn artists," and "snitches" and say that they are "dirty," "uncool," and "un-trustworthy." This kind of characterization of heroin addicts, which is genuinely believed, does not bespeak any inclination or favorable orientation to heroin use. But of much greater impor-tance than this is the apparent fact that the majority of youthful drug users have no association with heroin users and no access to heroin. Without such association and access, youthful drug users cannot enter the arena of heroin use. We wish to outline what seems to be the way in which access to heroin use may be estab-lished; this way is open to only a portion of adolescent drug users.

Outside of a jail or prison situation, the major way in which youthful drug users come into association with heroin users is by way of engaging in hustling practices. Adolescents, particularly in the lower strata, may indeed know individuals who are opiate addicts but such acquaintanceship does not provide basis for association on the level of heroin use. However, when a youth begins to associate with hustlers on the level of their hustling, the chances are very high that he will be exposed to heroin use. Thus, we find that access to heroin use is fairly well limited to the type of adolescent drug user that we have discussed as the "player." By virtue of their place and role in the adolescent world of drug use, players are by far the most likely group of youthful drug users to ever come close to heroin use.

The mere opportunity to associate with heroin users under conditions where one can observe, or talk with them about their heroin use does not signify that the player will automatically try heroin. Our player informants testify from their experience and observations that such use may not take place. Other players may make an initial try at its use and go no further. But othefi may be led to try the drug with some repetition, thus entering the initial stage of use that is spoken of as "chippying." In this stage, use of heroin is intermittent and is frequently confined to weekend par-ties. During the "chippy" phase of opiate use, players often change their conception of opiate use. Some are surprised by particular hustlers who appear to support a habit as a "luxury"; others are im-pressed by the hustling ability of some of the addicts; and some may get involved with a "dope fiend" who pulls them down.

For the most part, the players who are "chippying" with heroin think that they have their heroin under control and do not believe that it is possible for them to get "hooked." Usually a player is moving fast in the streets, hustling, and supporting a "weekend habit." But when he shortens the intervals between shots, tolerance develops and he may increase the dose of heroin to receive the initial effects of the first shot. After going without the drug for a while, he feels "sick" and awareness of addiction clutters his thoughts. He may "fight the yen" (craving for opiates to eliminate withdrawal symptoms) in a state of confusion. But if he "fixes" again to prevent himself from "getting sick," he will realize that he is "hooked"; addicts often comment that heroin "sneaks up" or it "grabs."51

Criminalization as a Cause

We have thus far treated the stepping-stone theory as if it were a purely academic question. In fact, of course, the question is being asked because of certain policy determinations that are allegedly justified by the stepping-stone effect. In other words, even if we were to concede a causal stepping-stone effect, we must now ask, as we did in the previous chapter, whether marijuana use and its illegality are not concurrent causes of heroin addiction. After all, if the marijuana pusher represents such a danger of heroin addiction, it is only reasonable to ask, why doesn't the alcohol "pusher"? If, as most scientists assure us, the basis for any stepping-stone effect must be social, not pharmacological, at least one reason for the difference is simple. The "alcohol pusher" is a legitimate businessman; people who use his wares do not consider themselves thereby to be drug criminals and he does not deal in illegal drugs such as heroin.

The fact is that the most reasonable explanations of a step-ping-stone effect, if one exists at all, rely upon the illegality of marijuana more than on any characteristic of the drug itself to cause the progression to heroin. Thus, two of the reasons given by Ball why marijuana use might predispose one to use heroin are that "both marijuana and heroin are only available from underworld sources" and that "both are illegal."52

One might also suggest the possibility advanced in the Blumer report that the selling of marijuana is the most common intro-duction into the life-style of the player, which in turn is the most common introduction to heroin use; the likelihood that the serious penalties attached to the use of marijuana convince young people that they" are at least legally no worse off using heroin; the fact that young people feel that the law vastly overestimates the dan-gers of marijuana use and hence conclude the same about heroin; or any one of several other explanations similar to those discussed in the previous chapter. These explanations of a stepping-stone effect have not been demonstrated. The most we can say is that these causal theories are more consistent with the known facts than any of the explanations advanced by the advocates of marijuana criminalization. And if these latter explanations are correct, at least so far as the progression to heroin is concerned, the marijuana laws are doing more harm than good.

Moreover, if they are correct, then since at least some of them operate as much on young middle-class white users as on poor Negroes and Spanish-American youths, we might expect to see a spread of heroin addiction to groups that had formerly way of engaging in hustling practices. Adolescents, particularly in the lower strata, may indeed know individuals who are opiate addicts but such acquaintanceship does not provide basis for association on the level of heroin use. However, when a youth begins to associate with hustlers on the level of their hustling, the chances are very high that he will be exposed to heroin use. Thus, we find that access to heroin use is fairly well limited to the type of adolescent drug user that we have discussed as the "player." By virtue of their place and role in the adolescent world of drug use, players are by far the most likely group of youthful drug users to ever come close to heroin use.

The mere opportunity to associate with heroin users under conditions where one can observe, or talk with them about their heroin use does not signify that the player will automatically try heroin. Our player informants testify from their experience and observations that such use may not take place. Other players may make an initial try at its use and go no further. But others may be led to try the drug with some repetition, thus entering the initial stage of use that is spoken of as "chippying." In this stage, use of heroin is intermittent and is frequently confined to weekend par-ties. During the "chippy" phase of opiate use, players often change their conception of opiate use. Some are surprised by particular hustlers who appear to support a habit as a "luxury"; others are im-pressed by the hustling ability of some of the addicts; and some may get involved with a "dope fiend" who pulls them down.

For the most part, the players who are "chippying" with heroin think that they have their heroin under control and do not believe that it is possible for them to get "hooked." Usually a player is moving fast in the streets, hustling, and supporting a "weekend habit." But when he shortens the intervals between shots, tolerance develops and he may increase the dose of heroin to receive the initial effects of the first shot. After going without the drug for a while, he feels "sick" and awareness of addiction clutters his thoughts. He may "fight the yen" (craving for opiates to eliminate withdrawal symptoms) in a state of confusion. But if he "fixes" again to prevent himself from "getting sick," he will realize that he is "hooked"; addicts often comment that heroin "sneaks up" or it "grabs.""

Criminalization as a Cause

We have thus far treated the stepping-stone theory as if it were a purely academic question. In fact, of course, the question is being asked because of certain policy determinations that are allegedly justified by the stepping-stone effect. In other words, even if we were to concede a causal stepping-stone effect, we must now ask, as we did in the previous chapter, whether marijuana use and its illegality are not concurrent causes of heroin addiction. After all, if the marijuana pusher represents such a danger of heroin addiction, it is only reasonable to ask, why doesn't the alcohol "pusher"? If, as most scientists assure us, the basis for any stepping-stone effect must be social, not pharma-cological, at least one reason for the difference is simple. The "alcohol pusher" is a legitimate businessman; people who use his wares do not consider themselves thereby to be drug criminals and he does not deal in illegal drugs such as heroin.

The fact is that the most reasonable explanations of a step-ping-stone effect, if one exists at all, rely upon the illegality of marijuana more than on any characteristic of the drug itself to cause the progression to heroin. Thus, two of the reasons given by Ball why marijuana use might predispose one to use heroin are that "both marijuana and heroin are only available from underworld sources" and that "both are illegal."52

One might also suggest the possibility advanced in the Blumer report that the selling of marijuana is the most common intro-duction into the life-style of the player, which in turn is the most common introduction to heroin use; the likelihood that the serious penalties attached to the use of marijuana convince young people that they are at least legally no worse off using heroin; the fact that young people feel that the law vastly overestimates the dangers of marijuana use and hence conclude the same about heroin; or any one of several other explanations similar to those discussed in the previous chapter. These explanations of a stepping-stone effect have not been demonstrated. The most we can say is that these causal theories are more consistent with the known facts than any of the explanations advanced by the advocates of marijuana criminalization. And if these latter explanations are correct, at least so far as the progression to heroin is concerned, the marijuana laws are doing more harm than good.

Moreover, if they are correct, then since at least some of them operate as much on young middle-class white users as on poor Negroes and Spanish-American youths, we might expect to see a spread of heroin addiction to groups that had formerly been thought immune. It is likely that this use will not become widespread since heroin use, being at least in part a creature of despair, in all probability does not meet the needs of middle-class users as well as do many other drugs. If indeed there is such a spread—and there are indeed signs of this, though as yet almost entirely among the most psychiatrically disturbed young members of the white middle-class--it will be hard to blame on the phar-macological explanations, such as marijuana's "whetting the ap-petite," that have been put forth. The problem is that middle-class marijuana use is at least old enough for any such effect to have been noticeable long before this. Rather it will be merely another cost of the criminalization of marijuana.

Recently, moreover, it appears that efforts to enforce criminalization of marijuana have contributed to the heroin problem in yet another way. New York City is presently engulfed in an out-break of heroin use not matched since the epidemic of 1948-49. Though the mechanism for this has not yet been fully docu-mented, most observers place the blame squarely upon Operation Intercept, which for several weeks made marijuana almost un-obtainable in large areas of the United States. This marijuana drought took place at a time when, by coincidence, an ample supply of heroin in New York City enabled the traders in heroin to pull off a "business coup." They diluted their usual grade of heroin, dropped its price, and offered it widely for sale in the high schools and junior high schools where it previously had' been unobtainable at a price competitive with that of marijuana. As a result, heroin made substantial inroads on a population far younger —and somewhat more middle-class—than that previously involved with the drug. Moreover, since heroin is strongly addictive the process was relatively irreversible, even after the end of Operation Intercept had made marijuana easily available again. In this re-spect the switch to heroin occasioned by Operation Intercept was far more serious than the one to dangerous drugs described on pages 215 to 219.

Before leaving the effect of the criminalization of marijuana in promoting heroin addiction, there is one more mechanism we should mention. Actually it could have been mentioned as well in the previous chapter, but since the heroin-user is probably the most alienated from our society, it is most applicable here.

A major vehicle for the production of heroin addicts is imprisonment in a jail, prison, or juvenile detention center. Indeed, it is interesting to note that even neglecting other drugs the sequence among addicts is most often not precisely marijuana, then heroin. Rather it is marijuana, then incarceration, and then heroin. In places of incarceration, heroin addiction has status and inmates have a great deal of time to listen to at least some of the addicts' glowing accounts of their last "fix." Even more important, incarceration increases the despair, alienation, and feeling of worthlessness that are psychological correlates of heroin addic-tion. Where the incarceration is the result of crimes of violence, this may be an inevitable cost of enforcing an essential of civilized living. However, where young people are sent to the breeding ground of heroin addiction for violation of the marijuana laws, which are justified on the theory that they avoid an indirect threat of that addiction, the self-defeating nature of the law becomes clear.

The Implications of Accepting Causality

Even if we assumed that the stepping-stone effect exists and is not due to the illegality of marijuana but to some inherent characteristic of the drug, our inquiry would by no means be over. There would still remain a substantial question as to whether or not the prohibition of marijuana would be an appropriate way to diminish heroin addiction. We must remember that while the benefit of marijuana prohibition would be felt only by the very small percentage of the population from which heroin addicts originate, the costs of the law would fall upon all of so-ciety. Perhaps some advocates of marijuana prohibition find them-selves persuaded by Commissioner Giordano's comment that

even if we were to conclude that marijuana affects only the weak and the vulnerable, since when has our society stopped being con-cerned about a minority? The very purpose of many of our health laws is the protection of minorities.53

Other observers, however, may be left with the uneasy feeling that it is a most peculiar help we are extending to the "weak and vulnerable" Negro or Mexican-American when we arrest him for marijuana possession.

Nor can we rely on the idea that if arrest is a real threat, people will be deterred from marijuana use and hence it will not be necessary to make arrests. The problem, however, is simply that the group we are trying to save from heroin addiction is com-posed of persons who are among the least deterrable members of our society and who live in areas where for thirty years, despite the law, marijuana has been freely available. We can probably say that our drug-prohibition laws here are their least effective. As to this population, it can well be argued that even if marijuana use does cause subsequent heroin addiction, there is no legal attack that could significantly affect the addiction rate by drying up sources of marijuana, without a vast increase in the amount of resources devoted to suppressing the traffic and indeed without enormous inequalities of law enforcement that might do even more damage than the maintenance of our heroin-addiction rate.

Finally, and of crucial importance, even if we conceded that the input of resources aimed at reducing the supply of marijuana prevents a discernible amount of heroin addiction, the very, rough-est calculation would show that this money and energy would be far more effective if it were applied directly to the heroin prob-lem than to the marijuana-users who are far more numerous, spread out, and harder to catch than heroin addicts. Indeed, both the then head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs54 and the chief of narcotics enforcement in the state of California55 have told legislative bodies that they could do a better job enforcing the laws against heroin if they were not forced to divert so much of their efforts to enforcing the marijuana laws.

Summary

Probably the most common justification today for the criminalization of marijuana is that marijuana use is a step-ping-stone to heroin addiction. As in the case of marijuana and the dangerous drugs discussed in Chapter VI, we look first for an association between marijuana and heroin use. This, however, is much more complicated than it was in the case of the dangerous drugs. It is true that the great majority of American heroin ad-dicts have used marijuana before their heroin use. The associa-tion is shown, however, only if it is true that a good percentage of marijuana-users use heroin. In fact, the reverse is true.

The gross arrest rates for marijuana use and heroin use if any-thing point against a strong causal connection. In California, for instance, over a seven-year period adult marijuana arrests rose 740 percent while heroin arrests declined by seven percent.

Other data militate against the argument for the stepping-stone theory. Thus in the Haight-Ashbury, where marijuana use was practically universal at the time of the study, only about two percent of the marijuana-users had become heroin addicts. Also, on college campuses it has been found that despite widespread marijuana use, heroin addiction is minimal. Indeed, in studies of the student population it was shown that the use of other drugs was more closely related to that of heroin than was marijuana.

Probably the best summary of the data is that there appears to be no association between marijuana and heroin throughout most of our society—except among poor urban Negroes and Spanish-speaking Americans who in fact make up the predominant part of the heroin population.

Granting then this association, we must turn next to the evi-dence on the causation issue. Many explanations for such a causal connection have been proposed, most of which are pharmacological in nature—such as the assertion that marijuana creates a craving .for kicks that only heroin can supply. They do not explain, however, why this causal connection affects only lower-class ethnic minorities, and they fail to explain why it is only marijuana that is a stepping-stone to heroin.

There are good reasons for believing that there is, in fact, no causg-relationship between marijuana use and that of heroin. It is possible, for instance, that any association is adequately explained by the predisposition mechanism suggested in the previous chapter.

In addition to the existence of a reasonable alternative mech-anism, we must consider the fact that none of the psychiatric studies published between 1950 and 1965 on the causes of heroin addiction even mentions marijuana as a cause. The only mention of the stepping-stone theory in the literature is in discussions of marijuana, not heroin. The Blumer report, in fact, seems to sup-port the idea that heroin addiction is the result of personal con-tacts brought about by a life-style not particularly connected to marijuana use.

Even if the stepping-stone theory were conceded to be accurate, and marijuana use did cause some people to try heroin, we would still have to ask, as in the previous chapter, whether or not the criminalization of marijuana is part of the problem, rather than the solution. The same arguments put forth in the last chapter apply here. Marijuana and heroin are to some extent available from the same marketing structure. Treatment of marijuana and heroin as almost equally criminal deprives the law of any deterrent force once the individual has used marijuana, and the criminalization of marijuana damages the credibility of drug-education efforts.

Finally, even if marijuana use did cause heroin use and the criminalization of marijuana did not aggravate the problem, we would still have to ask whether the criminalization of marijuana was a proper response to the stepping-stone problem. Unless en-forcement of the marijuana laws could so restrict the supply of marijuana that the prospective drug-user could not obtain it, a possibility discussed in Chapter X, the only way the marijuana laws would be effective in dealing with the problem of heroin addiction would be by deterring those in the susceptible group from using marijuana. These young, usually delinquent, lower-class Negro and Spanish-American youths, however, are probably among the least deterrable in the nation.

Finally, the resources spent upon marijuana enforcement could be utilized much more effectively if they were to be applied directly to the heroin problem, either in prevention or cure.

In short, the stepping-stone-to-heroin theory not only does not justify criminalization of marijuana, but probably militates against it. In any eVent, the marginal good in terms of reducing the number of heroin addicts that the criminalization of marijuana could possibly do falls far short of balancing the costs of the marijuana laws as discussed in Chapters II and VI.

NOTES

1. Giordano, Henry L., "The Prevention of Drug Abuse," The Hu-manist, March–April, 1968, p. 21.
2. C. Towns, "The Injury of Tobacco," Century, March, 1912, quoted in Sinclair, Andrew, Era of Excess: A Social History of the Prohibi-tionist Movement (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 180.
3. Mandel, J., "Who Says Marijuana Use Leads to Heroin Addic-tion?" Journal of Secondary Education, Vol. 43, May, 1968, p. 211.
4. Hearings on H. R. 6385 (Taxation of Marijuana) Before the House Committee on Ways and Means, 75th Congress, 1st Session (1937), p. 24.
5. Interview with H. J. Anslinger, "Teen-age Dope Addicts: New Problems?" U.S. News & World Report, Vol. 30, June, 1951, p. 18.
6. This is exhaustively documented in J. Mandel, The Stepping-Stone Theory (Chicago: Aldine, scheduled for publication after 1970).
7. Connery, G., "Control of Narcotic Addiction," Journal of the American Medical Association, Nov. 17, 1951, p. 1162.
8. Mandel, "Who Says Marijuana Use Leads to Heroin Addiction?" p. 213.
9. Committee on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Drug Depen-dence: The Crutch that Cripples, American Medical Association (1967), p. 17.
10. See Ball, John C., Chambers, Carl D., and Ball, Marion J., "The Association of Marijuana Smoking with Opiate Addiction in the United States," Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 59, 1968, p. 177.
11. Ball, John C., "Marijuana Smoking and the Onset of Heroin Use," British Journal of Criminology, October 1967, p. 409.
12. Letter from John Kramer, M.D., Nov. 23, 1967.
13. Chapple, P. A. L., "Cannabis: A Toxic and Dangerous Sub-stance—A Study of 80 Takers," British Journal of Addictions, Vol. 61, 1966, p. 269.
14. Ball, Chambers, and Ball, op. cit., p. 174.
15. A Follow-up Study of the 1960 Adult Drug Offenders, Bureau of Criminal Statistics (Calif.), 1968, pp. 1-2.
16. See e.g., Ball, Chambers, and Ball, op cit., p. 174.
17. Follow-up Study, p. 6i.
18. Drug Arrests and Dispositions in California, 1968, Bureau of Criminal Statistics, Department of Justice, State of California (1969), p. 45.
19. Follow-up Study, p. 78.
20. Ibid.
21. Juvenile Drug Offender, Oct., 1967, p. 10.
22. Glazer, Daniel, Inciardi, James T., and Babst, Dean V., "Later Heroin Use by Marijuana Using and Non-Drug Using Adolescent Offenders in New York City," International Journal of the Ad-dictions, Vol. 4, 1969, p. 145.
23. Bloomquist, Edward R., Marijuana (Beverly Hills: Glencoe Press, 1968), p. 45.
24. Drug Arrests in California, Advance Report, 1967, Bureau of Criminal Statistics, Division of Law Enforcement, Department of Justice, State of California, pp. 6, 10.
25. Drug Arrests and Dispositions, 1968, p. 53.
26. Drug Arrests in California, 1968—Midyear Preliminary Survey, Bureau of Criminal Statistics, Department of Justice, State of California, p. 6.
27. lbid.
28. Drug Arrests in California, Advance Report, 1967, footnote 15.
29. Shick, J. F. E., Smith, D. E., and Meyers, F. H., "Marijuana Prac-tices in the Haight-Ashbury Subculture," Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, Vol. II, Issue 1, Fall, 1968, p. 64.
30. Ibid., p. 19.
31. Ibid., Tables II and III.
32. Ibid., pp. 22, 24.
33. Blum, Richard H., Students and Drugs (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1969).
34. Ibid., p. 41.
35. Ibid., p. 103.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. Giordano, op. cit., p. 21.
39. Goth, A., Medical Pharmacology, 4th ed. (St. Louis: The C. V. Mosby Co., 1968).
40. Ball, op. cit., p. 410.
41. "Cannabis," Report by the Advisory Committee on Drug Depen-dence, London, 1968, pp. 12-13.
42. Miller, Donald E., "What Policemen Should Know About the Marijuana Controversy," address before the International Nar-cotic Enforcement Officers Association, Oct. 22-26, 1967, at Louisville, Ky., pp. 15-16.
43. Ball, Chambers, and Ball, op. cit., p. 175.
44. Miller, op. cit., p. 19.
45. "Possession of Marijuana in San Mateo County, California: Some Social Costs of Criminalization," Stanford Law Review, Vol. 22, 1969, p. 106.
46. See Mandel, J., The Stepping-Stone Theory.
47. Blumer, Herbert, and others, Add Center Project Final Report: The World of Youthful Drug Use (Berkeley: University of Cali-fornia, 1967).
48. Ibid., p. 13.
49. Ibid., pp. 32-37.
50. Ibid., pp. 43-47.
51. Ibid., pp. 73-74.
52. See Ball, Chambers, and Ball, op. cit., p. 132.
53. Address by Henry L. Giordano, Associate Director, U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Drug Abuse, at the Conference of the National Emergency Committee, National Council on Crime and Delin-quency, Atlanta, Ga., May, 18, 1968, pp. 9-10.
54. Hearings on Appropriations for the Treasury and Post Office De-partments and the Executive Office for 1968 Before a Subcom-mittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representa-tives, 90th Congress, 1st Session, 1967, Part 7, p. 406.
55. See San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 4, 1967, p. 4.